Everyday Urban Self-Defense Tips – Rogue’s 31 Days To Readiness [Day 24]

Quite frankly, it doesn’t matter where you live, we should all be aware of our own self-defense needs. Self-defense is so ‘taboo’ these days. Nobody wants to hurt anyone else. And I get that. I really do.

I don’t like violence. Violence is sometimes necessary, though. I’ve come to terms with that. If someone wants to do harm to me, then I have every right to defend myself. I’ll never start the violence, but I train so that I can protect myself and those that I love against anyone wanting to do us harm.

The reality is, there are bad people out there and we can’t live in a ‘it’ll never happen to me’ bubble. You know who else said, ‘it’ll never happen to me’? Everyone who has ever been a victim without any means of self-defense.

I am not victim blaming. The aggressor is always in the wrong. I am simply saying that we have to understand that there are bad people out there wanting to do bad things. It’s not always from strangers, either. Sometimes it’s our own family. But it doesn’t matter who it comes from…

Your life is valuable and should be protected.

As they say,

“If you want peace, prepare for war.”

There are many ways for us to be preventative so we never get into ourselves into bad situations to begin with. Then if a bad situation does approach us, we’ll also have the skills to deal with it.

Here are some everyday self-defense tips:

1. Maintain situational awareness at all times. By keeping all of our senses open and aware, we can potentially see danger before it even approaches. We can hear and recognize signs. See someone coming our way. Listen to our intuition. One of the best ways to maintain situational awareness is to remain off of our phones while in public and keep our eyes and ears up at all times.
2. Keep self-defense tools easily accessible at all times. I highly recommend that everyone carry something to help them with their self-defense. This could be a striking pen in order to get distance, it could be a knife, it could be pepper spray, it could be a gun. Whatever it is, keep it easily accessible and available. If you have it in the bottom of your purse buried underneath a bunch of stuff, that’s not going to be easy to get to in the split seconds that you need it. Though, your purse will also be a great improvised weapon. So do bags of groceries, a water bottle, your feet, etc. Anything can be a tool for self-defense. Your life is more important that stuff.
3. Create distance whenever you can. If someone approaches you, keep a safe distance so you can either run or deploy a weapon. This is important when driving as well, always keep at least one car length behind the car in front of you in case you need to drive away for whatever reason.
4. Stand up straight and walk with purpose. This is one of the best pieces of advice that my mom ever gave me and has stuck with me my entire life. I walk tall, briskly and with a strong ‘don’t mess with me’ face. You want to make yourself a hard target, which starts with how you act. Here’s a good example of how you should present yourself: ‘walk like you’ve been sent to murder Captain America’.
5. Never stop training. Train train train and never stop training. I dry fire everyday. I’ll use my knife everyday. I deploy my tools everyday just so I’m aware of where they’re at and how quickly I can access them. Situational awareness is a daily exercise. You should always want to improve yourself and your abilities to protect yourself. Get into classes, one of the best self-defense training out there is Krav Maga. If you own a firearm, get consistent training and know your firearm inside and out.
6. You are your own bodyguard. No amount of screaming or a whistle will save you against a predator. You can certainly run into a crowded building and ask to use their phone or ask for asylum. But unfortunately, in this day-and-age, if you’re running or screaming or asking for help, 9 out of 10 people won’t stop to help. They will keep moving on about their lives as they don’t want to get involved and they’ll wait for ‘someone else’ to handle it. YOU need to be that ‘someone else’ and simply handle it yourself. Attacks happen within minutes and by the time you’re able to call 911, it may be too late.
7. Trust your instinct. If you feel weird about a situation, place or person, get out of there. Don’t just brush it off as paranoia, listen to your instincts. Both men and women have intuition and we need to make sure we’re honed in on it.
8. Face your fears. We all have fears, but the sooner we’re able to face them, the quicker we’ll come to terms with a resolution and take action. Acknowledge and accept your fear and move forward anyway.

The main point is, be a hard target. Prevention is key when it comes to self-defense. Make yourself look like someone that nobody wants to mess with. This is especially true if you’re a woman. Women have been told to be nice and smile and to be trusting of others, but unfortunately, this also makes us easy targets.

There’s a balance of being nice, but also standing your ground and saying ‘no’, being insistent with your intentions and never backing down. Be strong and don’t let others take advantage of you or your loved ones.

If prevention doesn’t work, then scratch, claw, bite, kick in the groin, step on feet, jab your thumb into their eyes; do whatever you have to do in order to get away.

Your life and the lives of your loved ones matter.

See you in day 24!